Maria Barnas

Translated by Donald Gardner

Erbarme dich

An Englishman with gorgeous eyes is tuning my piano.I’m going to do it very carefully, he says. droplets and leaves are spilling from the elderberry bush in the corner of the garden, sir, like words from my mouth.Would you mind?I think the tree is incurably ill.We might have a slight problem here.We.

A humid summer has dawned in my mind dear sir, a paralysing heat. Do you have any suggestions?I don’t know what ‘scorching’ is in English.Would you like a drink?Thank you so much.How much?

In Brussels I ate chocolate made of gold foiland I wore an impeccable hat.In Paris I rode in a Ferris wheel.I could go with you to London just like that.

If I have sugar. And milk.The Englishman plays.Erbarme dich.

That’s that and that’s all.Thank you so much.

Why I Am Not a Painter

I am not a painter, I am a poet. Why? I think I would rather be a painter, but I am not. - Frank O' Hara

Through a chink in the door my eyes take in the roomat the level of a receding horizon.

Loops and lines sprout through vanishing points to trace what escapes.

Make sure that considerations are measurable: weigh them in a hand that you clench like a fist

and strike a table. Listen to its sound echoing in the room next door.

Close a door to make something happen –a form of certainty in the faded

house that has shifted slightly. The floors are buckling and the windows and doors

show cracks. These are the hinges of an existence I call my own.

Thought and the Girl

Out of the corner of my eye I see fields and houses go pastwhile I try to pay attention to the girlsitting opposite me. The corner of an eye can contain many things.A house that I recognize a ditch a cow and even

the creature grazing and staring in bewilderment as itstretches its neck anxiously hearing an unfamiliar sound.Or is it, more stiffly, awaiting a signal?Animals proliferate at the edge.

They settle down in this subsiding marshlandwith ungainly houses in every one of whichI’ve lived. The girl is clasping a book​in her lap with cross-sections of brains.She draws circles round lobules and ventricles and dissectsmy ability to think and think of her.

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Maria Barnas (b. 1973) is a poet, artist, columnist and novelist. She has published four Dutch-language collections of poetry and one in English, Umbra. Twee zonnen (‘Two Suns’, 2003) was awarded the C. Buddingh Prize for first collections, while her 2013 collection, Jaja de oerknal (‘Oh Yes, the Big Bang’) was shortlisted for the VSB Poetry Prize. A feature of Barnas’s work is its reckless gaiety and unnerving wit. Many of her poems are imbued with a sense of deep discomfort at everyday situations that are generally seen as normal.

World’s first major ecopoetry award. With a first prize of £5,000 for the best single poem embracing ecological themes, the award ranks amongst the highest of any English language single poem competition. Second prize is £2,000 and third prize £1,000.